Whatever This Call Entails

26 September 2025

https://poems.culturing.net/2025/09/whatever-this-call-entails/

No one knows, do they, where roads lead
or how to stay true to the path
one intended to take...in the forest
of life only instinct can serve as a guide.
But which instinct prevails? Surely some
will destroy just as surely some
lead to new life. Can we build
around instinct the structures that guide her
to safety and fulfillment? Is that
the true task? One that's doomed from the start
yet imperative nonetheless...
Or is wandering still an option?

Wandering is not an option
for those who have glimpsed what it means
to be happy. For these, to not try
would be treason, a failure to heed
the calling horn. There are vessels to fill,
there are songs to write, and the world
spins forward forever, confounding our day in the sun.
The horn calls at the appointed time
to draw a man out of himself and into eternity.

Is there any other experience that compares
to giving life? Why then do we waste such precious time
on trivialities? There's not much point in arguing.
Those who know can't forget, and those who don't won't learn
through words, but only if the horn rips through their souls,
and we cannot summon the horn. It calls in its own time
to summon us back to the great chain of being, or at least
to the core of life's mystery. Who can resist?
So adieu to the solitary musings, farewell to the cage of the heart
and a warm-hearted welcome to whatever this call entails.

But is it really time? Mischievous time,
which hints where it does not fulfill? If only time
would stop a moment, let me get my bearings
and appoint myself director of my life.
Then I'd find peace. But it is not to be,
not here where all things change, where man
exposed to the elements discovers himself
with horror. And yet I dwell here, and must
dwell here, if I am to dwell at all,
because this call rekindles the horror
though it also sings of hope.

Hope, that thing with feathers, lofty,
erudite, and vain, what can you say
when faced with darkness, lust, and pain?
It is unclear which way the world turns,
how it moves or how our many special loves
turn back to dust. But I know this much:
it cannot be helped, from either end,
the falling or the getting up. In each case
Time and its eunuch on the horn
blow forceful melodies to doom mankind
to trying what so rarely comes to pass.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
I've heard that time keeps passing,
that our lives are mere ephemera,
but in the womb one hopes for something more.